There are those studying talent development who believe the idea of prodigy is largely a myth. If so, we have to find a new way to explain what Francisco Lindor is doing.

Based in part upon the work of Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson, Malcolm Gladwell argued the idea of the 10,000-hour rule in his best-selling book, Outliers. The idea was talent creation is mostly tied to practice time. The Beatles became a revolutionary rock band, he argued, not because they were blessed with rare, innate gifts, but because they performed live an extraordinary amount of times — more than 1,200 times between 1960 and 1964 — mostly in the seedy clubs of Hamburg, Germany. At one point in 1961, they are said to have performed 98 consecutive nights, often beginning at 7 p.m. and playing until the early hours of the morning.

Gladwell argued Bill Gates founded Microsoft not because he was the most brilliant mind of a generation, but because he had the benefit of being ...

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